Tulip’s “This is Not a Salon” Series

Tulip’s First “This is Not a Salon” Series
Saturday, June 21st 8:00 pm, Tulip Lakeview

Part 1: Minor/Nonstandard Intimacies

“Making a queer world has required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation. These intimacies do bear a necessary relation to a counter-public . . . . Nonstandard intimacies would seem less criminal and less fleeting if, as used to be the case, normal intimacies included everything from consorts to courtiers, friends, amours, and co-conspirators.”

Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public”

What happens when the monogamous couple form is no longer the privileged site of social and erotic organization? What minor/depersonalized/nonstandard intimacies can emerge? How can we build and sustain (queer) counter-publics in the wake of queer assimilation (e.g. gay marriage)? Whether we experience it as a lack (younger generations) or a loss (older generations) how can we create for ourselves—in the spirit of the sexual subcultures of the 1970s—spaces for sex and talk (ex. old Times Square, the bathhouse, S.F.’s Catacombs)? Given that these spaces have traditionally been occupied by gay men, how can queer women build such spaces for themselves?

Join us at Tulip Lakeview for conversation and booze (of course). Feel free to bring any art or writing that speaks to the topic.

Some titles to check out:

“Sex in Public” by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner
The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life by Michael Warner
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel Delany
That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation by Mattilda (a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore)
“Adultery” by Laura Kipnis
Public Sex by Pat Califia